


The Disappearance of Dusk

by Shardagra



Category: Welcome to Night Vale, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Conspiracy Theories, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, One Shot, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:28:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24974587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shardagra/pseuds/Shardagra
Summary: The older residents of the Mojave desert would sometimes talk about a small town at the end of the highway that was called Dusk, a place they’d seen as kids, but that they’d never been able to find again. A man went missing, a town vanished, and a radio signal sprung slowly to life from the static.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	The Disappearance of Dusk

The older residents of the Mojave desert would sometimes talk about a small town at the end of the highway that was called Dusk, a place they’d seen as kids, but that they’d never been able to find again. It was quaint, normal, and completely unnoticeable. 

As quirks took over the world, The small town of Dusk quietly thrived, drawing in new residents like moths to a burning flame. The town was surprisingly accepting of the strangeness of quirks, of the oddest, the most dangerous, the unexplainable. The town thrived, the town grew slowly. Young families with powerful children, those trying to start a new life, others simply seeking something different, they all flocked to Dusk.

Until it disappeared. 

Abruptly, no one could tell where the place was on a map - the oldest maps that used to show the way were all destroyed, or lost, somehow. Moths, fires, floods, all evidence gone. No one could point which way it was, and rumours grew that you had to die, to be lost, to only follow the sun and stars, to ever find the small town. The only thing that came back were the stories and the few who returned. 

One man, a quirk specialist and the mayor of King City, his quirk obscuring all recognizable features, dressed in a tan jacket, found wandering in the desert wastes, serenely holding a deerskin suitcase full of flies and murmuring about the radio, helicopters, librarians. 

Another, a younger man, who came home to find a duplicate grinning at him, his family not recognizing the man who’d left home to intern a few months ago, not until the police came to find no trace of a clone, only a confused man with memory loss, his family never realizing he’d ever left. 

Two government agents, sent to investigate the strange field produced by an unknown quirk, who never returned, despite their preparations, their training.

An old empath named Victor who had lived a normal life as a school counselor, who told stories about interning at a strange radio station with a man who never aged a day. He was one of many who simply walked into the Mojave, never to be seen again.

Others disappeared too, but these ones left traces - strange cryptic messages about glowing clouds, the dangers of the dog park, loving the beach. Texts, emails, letters that were dated as centuries old, morse code tapped by invisible things, dreams. 

An uncomfortable conclusion was eventually reached, tied to one of many missing persons cases. 

Cecil Gershwin Palmer had developed a quirk at birth, but not a visible one. It appeared at first that he had the ability to control time, to some extent, pausing motions, giggling at toys floating in midair, staring into space, unable to be distracted, only to blink and ramble about all the things he’d done that day. He remembered events oddly, talking about history like he’d been there, obsessing over puzzles and listening to the family radio for hours instead of playing with the other kids in the neighbourhood. He lived a quiet life with his mother, a demure woman with a quirk that allowed her to see into the future, but only for a moment, who was expecting a baby soon. 

Everything changed at the age of five. The boy started to hear things, things in the radio static, he claimed. He started to go missing from the house, only to re-appear, staring into space, often covered in sand. He’d talk in a slow, melodic voice that seemed not to be his about strange lights in the night sky, helicopters, librarians, a town in the middle of the desert that only he could find. His mother, worried about his future, used her quirk on him for the first and last time and recorded in her diary seeing something come out of a mirror to kill her child. 

Cecil’s eyes would start glowing white as his visions slowly crept into and became his life. His quirk was re-evaluated. 

The official report was never released. The wide-eyed doctor had pushed a high-level suppressant prescription into Mrs Palmer’s hands before telling them not to come back, his aura-reading quirk going haywire simply by being within the same room. Cecil’s forms were updated to include ‘mild reality manipulation’, and nothing more was said about the strange things that seemed to orbit the Palmer household.

He didn’t give any indication that he was leaving, but one day, at the age of 15, Cecil Gershwin Palmer disappeared, leaving only a cryptic note about a promising radio internship in the small town in the middle of the Mojave called Dusk. The only other thing he left behind was a full bottle of quirk suppressants, untouched and unopened despite his mother claiming he’d always taken them, that the bottle had been open and empty the past evening. 

The town disappeared off all maps about a year after his departure. His mother and younger sister, Abby, moved away, never saying where, and were never seen again. 

Eventually, people began to believe the myths that the strange old ghost town at the end of the highway was haunted, or that it had never even existed in the first place. 

And a high-level quirk signature unlike any ever seen began to radiate from the desert, never in one spot. It was traced back to the missing person’s case tied to the disappearance of the Palmer Family - the aura picked up by the original doctor was identical, only thousands of times more powerful than his forms claimed. 

Residents in other towns across the Mojave desert began to hear a strange radio signal, dubbed Night Vale Community Radio, or NVCR, through the static on long-dead stations, though radios that were smashed, dead, centuries old, or brand-new. 

Some people would travel into the desert, never to be seen again. Others came back. 

Those who did return told stories about a strange town called Night Vale, where powerful quirks, time fluctuations, different dimensions, all existed in a strange tangled dance around one man. 

The reports varied. He was afraid of mirrors. He was an evil clone. He was married to a scientist who’d disappeared nearly 5 years ago. He’d never met any scientists. He had a cat. He didn’t. He was a monster. He worked for something called Strexcorp. He'd died. He didn’t exist. He was the only thing that existed. His quirk was hypnosis, in his voice. It could kill you. It could change the very fabric of reality. He was a god. He was perfectly normal, quirkless. 

The only thing that was consistent was one fact: He hosted the local radio program, and showed no sign of ever leaving. 

The government decided to leave the town be.


End file.
